1.
Please pray with me.
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing
in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our Redeemer. Amen. The
message from God’s Word this wonderful Christmas Eve is taken from Luke 2:1-20,
and is entitled, “A Thief in the Night,” dear brothers and sisters in
Christ.
2.
Luke 2:12 says, “And this will be a sign for you:
you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” Into the garden where Adam and Eve lived,
there came a thief. He was a swindler, flattering with his tongue, smooth with
his words, like a con man who cheats the unsuspecting out of thousands of
hard-earned dollars. He told Adam and Eve that they were missing out on a great
deal that God was keeping to himself. If they would just eat of the forbidden
fruit, then they would be divine themselves. Turning them from God’s words to
his own deceitful words, this thief, the devil, robbed them blind. Enticing
them to try to be like God, he stole away their humanity. He stole their very
lives.
3.
You sons of Adam and daughters of Eve are in the very
same shape. Despite all of our knowledge, achievements, and abilities, the fact
is that we’re now less than human, a shadow of what we were created to be. We
can sometimes feel that in our very souls, that things aren’t right. This
inhumanity manifests itself in anger, impatience, and disrespect, in pride and
lusts, in greed, grudges, and gossip. To be human is to live as God’s creation,
to receive everything from him according to his will, to love and trust in him
as one who is good and gracious, and to be dependent on him for all that you
need. But by nature, we would rather be independent. We don’t want to be human,
creatures who are under a Creator. We want to be like God, in charge, calling
our own shots, doing our own thing. The truth is that all of us fell with
Adam. We’ve been robbed. We’ve been mugged and left to die.
4.
But in the garden, God promised to send One who would
silence the lying tongue of this thief and crush his head and rescue us from
his power. God would do this by turning the tables on the devil, using Satan’s
own tactics against him. This would be a sting operation. It was through a
virgin, Eve, that the tempter worked his thievery, and so it is also through a
virgin, Mary, that Christ enters into the world to undo and destroy the devil’s
work. It was in a quiet, subtle, and shrewd manner that the serpent attained
his plunder. And so, it is in a quiet, subtle, and shrewd manner that the Son
of God comes to restore what was taken from you, masking himself within weak
flesh and blood, becoming a real baby boy, being laid in a manger.
5.
The Scriptures say that our Lord comes as a thief in
the night (1 Thess 5:2; Rev 16:15). That is a reference to Jesus’
return on the Last Day. Like a robber in the darkness, he will come
unexpectedly to judge the living and the dead. But that phrase can also be
applied to Jesus’ first coming at Christmas. He comes like a thief in the
night, that is, quietly, hidden in the shadows, with almost no one noticing his
arrival. The Son of God, who upholds all creation, enters into his creation in
the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary. Traveling in Mary’s womb to the Holy City
of David, he’s born in a barn, because there’s no room for them in the inn. He
arrives on the scene secretly—like a holy burglar—to win back for you what the
devil stole away.
6.
The Son of God begins to do that in the very act of
his becoming man. By taking on your body and soul, Jesus has redeemed and
cleansed your humanity with his divine holiness. His incarnation fills and makes
mankind holy. In the stable with the animals, we see Jesus as the new Adam. He
has come to lift you out of your beastly inhumanity and re-create you by his
coming in the flesh. “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be
made alive” (1 Cor 15:22). God the Son took your humanity into
himself so that your humanity might be restored and made new. God has greatly
exalted you by becoming not an angel or any other creature but a true man, your
blood brother. He partakes fully of your humanity so that in him you might
become truly human again.
7.
That’s why already here the heavenly host breaks forth
in rejoicing. For the beginning of your salvation has been accomplished.
Already now God has begun to break the devil’s hold on you. The baby Jesus is
delivered from the blessed Virgin, and in this way you are being delivered from
the shadow of death. In Christ, your humanity is recaptured from the tempter
and given back to you. You who fell from God into the hands of darkness have
been brought back to your Maker. That is the peace on earth of which the angels
sing. God and man come together in Jesus, who is himself both God and man.
Those who believe and are baptized into the Body of Christ are thereby reunited
with God. And so the angels sing, “Glory to God in the highest” (v 14).
For it is God’s glory to come to your aid, to descend from heaven to help you
and rescue you.
8.
Think of it this way: By uniting your humanity with
his divinity, God has made your cause his own. He’s your powerful ally who
alone has the power to defeat the enemy. Whatever the devil did to us, he has
now done it to God, too, and that simply won’t stand. But again, our Lord engages
the battle undercover. Just as the Son of God was born in lowly state, so also
his divine power to save us will be hidden beneath meekness, humility, and
suffering. The tender brow of this little one is being prepared to be
pierced with thorns. His fragile hands and feet will feel the hammer’s
blow as spikes are driven through them, attaching him to the cross. The tiny
beating heart of this baby will grow to be pierced with a spear, and from
it will flow the blood that cleanses us of all sin.
9.
Jesus was crucified between two robbers (Mt 27:38), as
if he were a thief himself. And, in fact, he was. Not only did he come to rob
the devil of his victory over you, but he accomplished that by robbing you of
your sin. He stole away from you every uncleanness, every failure to love,
along with every hurtful and evil thing that has been said or done to you. He
robbed you of it all, took it as his own, and demolished it in his death. It
was through the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that Satan conquered
man, and so it was also by a tree, the holy cross, that Christ conquered Satan
and reconciled man to God again. It was by death that Satan sought to steal
away man’s glory. So, it’s by the death of Christ and his resurrection that the
glory of man is restored. What Had Been Stolen
from Us the Lord Restores by His Own Holy Thievery.
10.
Listen carefully to what the angels declare and
believe it: “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior,
who is Christ the Lord” (v 11). He comes as a thief in the night to take
away your sins and heal your injured flesh and spirit with his own pure flesh
and Holy Spirit. He is born to give you second birth to a new and everlasting
life with God.
11.
Luke 2:12 says, “And this will be a sign for you:
you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger” (v
12). On this glorious Christmas Eve let us, then, with his mother, Mary,
treasure and ponder these holy mysteries in our hearts. And let us with the
shepherds glorify and praise God for all the things we have heard and seen,
just as it has been told to us. Amen. Now
the peace of God that surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds
in Christ Jesus until life everlasting.
Amen.
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